Chapter 6 - THE GHOST OF THE PASTThe armored SUV tore down the winding mountain road, tires chewing through packed snow and ice with mechanical fury. The heater blasted hot air, melting the frost on the windshield, but inside the cabin, the atmosphere was freezing.
Mara sat in the passenger seat, her breathing ragged, her hands still trembling from the gunfight. In the back seat, Viktor had managed to pull himself into a secondary jump seat, his face pale from the physical exertion. Sweat dripped down his temples, mixing with the grime and dried blood.
"You're bleeding," Mara said quietly, nodding toward his right shoulder where a dark stain was slowly spreading across his black shirt. A stray bullet from the kitchen had grazed him.
"It's nothing," Viktor gritted his teeth, tearing open a first-aid kit he had pulled from the vehicle's glove compartment. "Keep your eyes on the rearview mirror. If Dante's clean-up crew has mobile units on the lower ridge, they'll be setting up a roadblock at the crossroads."
"Why are they hunting you like this?" Mara asked, the question finally breaking through her shock. "You're his brother, aren't you? How does it come to this?"
Viktor stopped wrapping the bandage around his shoulder. His hands hovered over the gauze, his dark eyes staring blankly at the dashboard. The harsh light of the instrument panel cast sharp shadows across his scarred face, making him look older, worn down not by age, but by betrayal.
"Dante didn't want the family business, Mara," Viktor said, his voice dropping into a hollow whisper. "He wanted absolute control. Three years ago, when our father died, he left the syndicate divided. I wanted to legitimize it—transition our assets into real estate, shipping, clean corporations. Dante wanted to keep the guns, the drugs, the blood."
He let out a harsh, humorless laugh.
"So, on a hunting trip in these very mountains, my own brother disabled my brakes, rolled my wheelchair down a ravine, and left me for dead in a blizzard. He thought the cold would finish the job, and the world would buy the story that Viktor Vance had finally slipped up."
Bear whimpered from the back seat, resting his heavy head against Viktor’s lap. The mafia boss stroked the dog’s thick fur slowly, his fingers trembling ever so slightly.
"If it wasn't for this animal," Viktor muttered, "I would be frozen bones buried under ten feet of white. He found me when no one else would."
"Bear has a good heart," Mara said softly, looking out the window at the endless, dark pine forests flashing by. "He doesn't care who you are. He just saw someone dying in the snow."
Viktor turned his head, looking at Mara with an expression she couldn't quite decipher—something close to awe, mixed with deep, sorrowful regret.
"You saved me too, Mara," Viktor said quietly. "A woman who had every reason to lock her door, turn off the lights, and let the storm take a stranger. Why did you do it?"
Mara looked down at her hands, still red and blistered from the climb. "Because I lost someone once. My husband, Caleb. He went out on a stormy night to help a stranded driver whose car had slid off the embankment. Another car came around the curve too fast. He never came home."
Her voice cracked slightly, but she forced herself to look Viktor in the eye.
"The world told me I was foolish to care about strangers. That looking out for yourself is the only way to survive. But sitting by that window tonight, listening to my dog scratch at the door... I realized that if we stop helping each other, we aren't surviving at all. We're just waiting to die."
Viktor stared at her, silent. The harsh, ruthless crime lord looked as though her words had struck him harder than any bullet ever could.
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Suddenly, Bear let out a sharp, urgent bark, sitting straight up and staring intently through the windshield.
Up ahead, blocking the entire width of the narrow mountain pass, sat two heavy black SUVs with their high-beams blazing, cutting through the swirling snow like twin walls of steel.
